


Great Sorrows and Burdens

by jenatwork



Category: Levius (Anime)
Genre: Canon - Anime, Fluff, M/M, Post-Canon, Romance, Sharing a Bed, middle-aged men
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-04
Updated: 2019-12-04
Packaged: 2021-02-26 19:13:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,462
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21673648
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jenatwork/pseuds/jenatwork
Summary: "After the match, and the mayhem...there was still Bill, watching through the gap in the curtain. And there was still Zack, slumped in a chair, clutching at his eye - "Bill wonders why the Cromwell men have a thing for swooping in to rescue people in need.
Relationships: Zack Cromwell/Bill Weinberg
Comments: 3
Kudos: 36





	Great Sorrows and Burdens

After the match, and the mayhem, after Levius and AJ had been stretchered away and someone had dealt with Crown (or whatever had been passing for him), there was still Bill, watching from the gap in the curtain. And there was still Zack, slumped in the chair, clutching at his eye - 

Shit. Through the descending fog of exhaustion, Bill crouched by his chair, one hand brushing Zack’s hair aside to to look at the damage.

“You need to be at the hospital too,” he told Zack, unsurprised when Zack shook his head.

“I’ve had worse.” But he let Bill carefully put the lens back into place, and dab at the drying blood with his handkerchief. There were no more medics left to flag down, and Natalia had gone with the other young ones, so Bill helped him to stand and escorted him out of the building, relieved that the remaining staff and officials and the remnants of the crowd paid them no heed.

Zack let himself be bundled into the passenger seat of his own car, and Bill tried not to show how much that frightened him.

He drove faster than was safe, hands tight on the steering wheel, listening to Zack’s sharp nasal inhales, the only sign he gave of the pain, and wondered what the doctors could do. Treatment of this sort wasn’t his area of expertise, and that frustrated him more than anything.

At the hospital, the staff took one look at the blood streaks under Zack’s eye, and sensibly got him into an examination room. Bill insisted on staying with him, assuring the doctor that Zack was suffering more than he let on and needed someone with more than half a brain to speak for him. The doctor relegated him to a chair in the far corner of the room, but that was good enough. He did his best to pay attention, although the doctor talked more to Zack than to him.

Zack got some sort of pain killer, and the doc lowered the lights in the room to examine the eye with a penlight, and Bill could only sit there with a death-grip on the arms of his chair as Zack hissed and grunted through it all.

The prognosis was generally good; with rest and medication for the pain, the damage would most likely heal itself, although he was cautioned not to strain his eyes with anything like reading or close-up work, and he was not to go near a boxing ring for at least a week.

Eventually, Zack was bandaged up and wheelchaired out to the wards, with Bill keeping pace after they refused to let him be the one pushing the chair. A ward nurse helped Zack into a bed, and told him he’d have to stay overnight for observation, but hopefully he’d be free to go in the morning after a final check-up. She looked about to clip his chart to the end of the bed-frame, but then thought better of it and handed it to Bill. Bits of it made sense; bits of it seemed to be in some hospital code that meant nothing to him. But holding it, just looking at it, felt like something he needed to do.

She pulled the curtains around the bed before she left, most likely for the benefit of the other patients on the ward as much as for their own privacy.

“Oi, put that down and stop for a minute.” Zack waved a hand at him. It was the first time he’d spoken since leaving the examination room, and it caught Bill off guard. He hooked the chart over the end of the bed-frame and moved to the other end of the bed, grabbing the spartan-looking chair and pulling it close. 

“How are you feeling?”

Zack shrugged, his good eye looking up to the ceiling.

“I can’t feel my face, but that’s probably for the best.” He wriggled a little in the bed, as if trying to come to a decision about something. “They put me in bed in my clothes. Feels all wrong.” He pulled an arm out from under the sheets and fussed with the buttons of his shirt, but his movements were sluggish.

“Hey, now.” Bill rose from the chair to help loosen the buttons on Zack’s shirt. His own fingers were unco-operative, and it took longer than it should before he could slip the shirt off. The nurse had left a plain cotton hospital gown for him, but Zack took one look at it and shook his head, so Bill placed it and the folded shirt on the shelf under the small bedside table. When that was done, he slumped back down into the chair with a long sigh.

“Looks like someone else needs to rest.” Zack settled back down on to the bed, a little more at ease in just his undershirt and trousers. 

“I’m fine.”

“Bollocks. Have you even slept at all this week?”

“As much as I needed to.”

“So hardly at all.”

Bill glared at the bed frame, which only made Zack laugh. 

“You need to rest more than I do” he told Bill. “Don’t think I can’t see those shadows under your eyes. Soon as you stop for more than a minute, you’ll be yawning.”

“I’m fine.” A second later, his body betrayed him with an impressive yawn. Zack only laughed harder, until Bill shushed him, gesturing beyond the curtain at the ward’s other residents.

“You should go home and sleep.”

“I’m not leaving.”

“Stubborn sod, aren’t you?”

“Look who’s talking!”

Zack huffed, and began to shuffle around in the bed, scooting away from Bill.

“What are you doing?”

“Get in, and lie down.” Zack re-settled himself on the furthest side of the bed, pulling back the sheets.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” he hissed, painfully aware that they were only separated from the rest of the ward by the flimsy curtain, and that anyone still awake could hear every word of their conversation. “The chair’s fine.”

“You’ll do your back in if you spend the night there. Then I’ll feel guilty for you being in pain. So stop being a pillock and do us both a favour.” He patted the sliver of empty space on the bed, and Bill knew his stubbornness was no match for Zack’s bull-headedness. 

He didn’t rush as he unlaced his shoes and stowed them neatly under the bed, nor as he removed his glass and folded the arms and placed them on the bedside table. He ignored Zack’s self-satisfied smirk as he lowered himself on to the bed, facing away from Zack as close to the edge as he could manage without risking a tumble. Still, there was no denying that it felt good to have the weight off his feet at last, and Zack’s possessive arm around his middle was familiar and comforting. 

For a few quiet seconds, they shuffled and readjusted themselves until Bill had found a place where he wouldn’t be kept awake by trapped limbs or awkward angles.

“I hope all this was worth it,” he muttered when they both had finally settled. “What is it with you Cromwell men and insisting on rescuing everybody, even if it means throwing yourselves into danger?”

He felt Zack’s laugh more than he heard it.

“At least we know Levius came by it honestly.” Even Bill managed a chuckle at that one. “And where would you be if I hadn’t rescued you?”

“I dread to think.”

The rest of the ward was blessedly quiet. It was already late into the evening when they’d left the stadium, and Bill had no solid idea of how much time had passed since then. Finally being able to rest made him feel almost guilty, as though he’d forgotten some important thing he should have been working on.

“I should have checked on Levius,” he mumbled, surprised by how difficult talking felt all of a sudden.

“In the morning.” Zack tightened his arm, adamant that Bill was going nowhere.

He couldn’t find the energy to protest. It took all he had to focus on the solid feel of Zack’s arm around him. Vaguely, the thought of a nurse finding them bundled up in bed together in the morning prodded at the part of his brain responsible for worrying, but he couldn’t muster more than a token protest, his mind already fuzzy and his eyes too heavy to stay open.

Zack squeezed, just a little, and pressed his lips to the crown of Bill’s head.

“Stop thinking. Anyone says anything in the morning, I’ll give ‘em what for.”

Bill remembered the first time Zack had given someone else ‘what for’ on his account, and felt the last of the tension slip from his tired limbs. 

“My hero.”


End file.
